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SASY - Supplied Air Snorkeling for Youth

Supplied Air Snorkeling Debuts

From Innovation to Invention

"Necessity is the mother of invention." — Richard Franke: Northern Memoirs, 1658

"Compromise is the key to a happy family." —Wayne Hasson, 1999

By Cathryn Castle

Every now and then a good idea comes along, one that sparks an invention. Some ideas have spawned inventions that make the world a better place — ideas that led to things like penicillin, the automobile and the McDonald’s Happy Meal.TM

Most great inventions aren’t cooked up in scientific think tanks; they often evolve out of a need to solve a problem or resolve a conflict. Wayne Hasson is the father of a family that includes two young children, so he knows all about problem solving and conflict resolution. What he didn’t fully understand until recently is that one of his "keep the family happy" ideas — a new type of dive gear he invented for his kids — may turn out to be much more than that.

Hasson, a resident of the Cayman Islands, is a yacht captain, commercial pilot, course director for the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI) and Technical Diving International (TDI), Professional Association of Dive Instructors (PADI) instructor, and partner and managing director of Aggressor Fleet operations. His company takes people diving all over the world. Thousands have visited exotic dive destinations aboard his company’s live-aboards, which tout fun and easy diving as their trademark.

You’d think a guy with his talent and training, especially as a dive instructor, would have little problem introducing his kids to scuba. But he did have one problem: his wife. Anne Hasson, Wayne’s marriage and business partner for more than 18 years and mother of his two children, was determined that the kids wait to scuba dive until they reached the minimum age for certification, which is 12. Anne is a veteran divemaster, an accomplished photographer and an underwater model who has a great love for the sea. But she wasn’t prepared to gear up her kids — Davis, age 7, and Caroline, age 5 — to go below the surface — even a few feet deep, at such young ages. She encouraged them to be content with snorkeling until they grew older. The kids are water bugs who love to snorkel, but they complained that they didn’t like it whenever they occasionally breathed water through their snorkels and came up sputtering. Besides, they wanted to use the grown-up gear like Mom and Dad. They wanted to scuba dive.

With his kids bugging him to let them try scuba and Anne not willing to budge on the age-limit issue, Hasson had to come up with something that would please everyone — he needed a compromise. As a result, necessity birthed the invention of a product that may have a far-reaching, positive impact on how future divers get their start on scuba — and on ocean education in general.

The Great Compromise

Wayne tinkered around a bit, rigged a life vest with a pony bottle and regulator, and let his kids try breathing from an air tank while positively buoyant at the surface. Their reaction was pure joy. Breathing through the regulator allowed them to swim face down in the water and view the sights below, gave them the scuba experience they wanted, and helped keep them from choking as they sometimes did while using snorkels. Having them safely buoyed by the life vest fulfilled Anne’s only-at-the-surface requirement. Working with John Modugno at Custom Bouyancy, Inc. they spent almost a year on research and development of the unit, with Wayne as inventor, the kids as test subjects and Anne the quality control/safety officer. Once they had a refined version, they invited local and vacationing kids to try it. The results were unanimous — big fun! Wayne knew they were onto something more than just a water toy for their own family.

The result of their efforts is called the Supplied Air Snorkeling system. It allows kids to breathe on scuba while at the surface, provides unsinkable buoyancy and offers several safety features that prevent user misuse.

Supplied Air Snorkeling for Youth (SASY) operates with either a 13- or 19-cubic-foot tank which fits into a specially designed holder that adjusts to fit either tank. (A 13-cubic-foot tank will allow a typical 50-pound/23-kg kid to spend 45 minutes on the surface.) The tanks are marked with the Supplied Air Snorkeling logo as an identifier for fill stations. Two small straps on either side of the tank valve keep the tank from rolling around and help stabilize the system in the water. The tank holder is bright-red with reflective white tape fashioned on the sides to resemble a dive flag, so it’s easy to see. The holder is also designed so that the tank can’t slip out while the child is wearing the unit, and the kid’s buddy can’t reach over and accidentally remove the tank.

Another important safety feature is the routing of the regulator hose; it comes from the tank on the user’s back, down under his or her right arm. It is attached so that the regulator stays in front of the user in the event that it comes out of the child’s mouth. The attachment is also designed to prevent kids from removing the regulator from the vest and breathing compressed air from the submerged regulator.

The unit is fully adjustable, at the shoulders, the crotch strap, and the cummerbund. The crotch strap prevents the tank from riding up, especially on smaller kids. Supplied Air Snorkeling is designed so that one unit can be adjusted to fit kids of all ages and sizes. Comfort and safety were incorporated into all aspects of the design, and there are no pockets on the unit that could permit the user to add weights of any kind.

The Supplied Air Snorkeling unit’s positive buoyancy is distributed in such a way that the user can float upright comfortably in the water when he or she is not kicking. You can switch from a floating to a swimming position by starting a normal kick cycle, and when back propulsion is needed, you can swim on your back at a 30- to 45-degree angle to the surface. The vest is constructed of three-quarter-inch-/2-cm-thick foam sealed inside the main body cover to provide the flotation characteristics and positive buoyancy factor.

Supplied Air Snorkeling for Youth (SASY) can be used with adult supervision by kids as young as age 5 because it eliminates some of the challenges younger children face while snorkeling, mainly getting water in their mouths. But it isn’t just for children. There is also an adult-size version, Supplied Air Snorkeling for Adults (SASA), which will appeal to people who are uncomfortable with conventional snorkel gear. The SASA units are designed to hold a 19- or 30-cubic-foot tank, each providing plenty of surface time for adult users. With sizes for all, parents and their kids will be able to explore coral reefs together safely while using Supplied Air Snorkeling units at the surface.

The Supplied Air Snorkeling logo features a friendly "spokesfish" named SAS the Eel, a character that will tell stories to kids about how to use the SASY system and help educate them about other marine life friends. The product’s motto is "A Beginning to Ocean Enjoyment," and it launched another project that will turn the profits of the product over to education for kids on another level.

From Innovation to Outreach

During the product’s early development, Wayne met with some close friends and associates in the diving business about the potential of the product. They all agreed that Supplied Air Snorkeling is much more than a product to be marketed — it’s even more than a new product category. As Wayne relates it, "We all acknowledged in that meeting that the health of the world’s oceans will soon become the responsibility of today’s children. We all very clearly saw this product as a way to give kids access to and a better understanding of the beauty and importance of the marine environment.

"So we agreed to do two things with the product. First, we decided to turn the manufacturing and marketing of Supplied Air Snorkeling over to the major manufacturers in the diving industry. The diving industry has been looking for ways to get kids interested at a much younger age, and the major diving manufacturers can give the product maximum exposure and get it into the hands of as many kids as possible."

The diving industry is excited about Supplied Air Snorkeling, and not just because it can stimulate sales of masks, fins and other related products. More importantly, it will make kids more comfortable in the water, create a potentially large market of future scuba divers and provide resorts around the world a product that attracts the growing family travel market. At the retail level, Supplied Air Snorkeling can provide instructors with ways for kids to learn and have fun, for example, while their parents are in dive classes.

"The next thing we all decided was to use the income from sales and licensing agreements of the product to further educate kids about the oceans," says Wayne.

With those goals in mind, the partners set up a nonprofit foundation called Oceans For Youth, assigned the patent and trademarks for Supplied Air Snorkeling to the foundation, and agreed that the income from sales and licensing of the product would fund the educational efforts of the foundation.

Oceans For Youth

Oceans For Youth Foundation has been established as a nonprofit, education-oriented foundation that will provide informational resources for the nation’s schools and teachers. With the income derived from Supplied Air Snorkeling, Oceans For Youth will create programs to help teachers educate grade- and middle-school-age children about the marine environment, and about the important relationships and connections between life in the seas and life on land.

The foundation intends to fund representatives (dive centers, instructors, writers and interested divers) who will visit schools and deliver presentations to teachers and students. Educational materials and resources will be made available to teachers. An Oceans For Youth Web site will be established and promoted for educators to find resources and information to use in their efforts, and for parents to use with their kids at home.

Supplied Air Snorkeling started out as a product to introduce kids to the marine environment, but as the creative and financial genesis of Oceans For Youth, it will be far more important as a tool to provide funding for ocean education on a broader scale.

The Oceans For Youth board of directors includes Wayne Hasson, president of the Aggressor Fleet; Jeff Simpson from Ocean’s Window dive center; Gary Worden, Jerry Beaty and Mark Young from Dive Training; and John Modugno from Custom Buoyancy Inc.

Educational Opportunities Abound

Supplied Air Snorkeling is being endorsed by the major certifying agencies, and introductory programs for Supplied Air Snorkeling are being considered so that instructors and resorts around the world can introduce it to kids and adults in an easy, safe way. Some will also provide special recognition certificates that kids will be proud to earn.

Supplied Air Snorkeling can be integrated into programs for kids to make fish-watching more entertaining and educational. Many of the resorts and retailers who have seen the product plan to make Supplied Air Snorkeling available in a family-friendly course where parents and older children using scuba can enjoy their level of instruction, with the younger ones joining in as SASY divers.

According to Wayne, "Oceans For Youth will be creating materials for those programs to make Supplied Air Snorkeling more fun and meaningful. With kids experiencing the beauty and awe of the seas firsthand, we hope to help create a future generation that understands — and is respectful of — the world’s marine environments."

Another Voice

"Making a commitment to something must come with education, and therefore must target a younger age," says Jean-Michel Cousteau, about his "Prior to Puberty" theory. He believes that to capture the attention of young people in today’s society you must attract them at an early stage of life; otherwise, you may lose their attention until after high school or college. "Supplied Air Snorkeling is a great invention and can help us lead more young people to get involved with the preservation and protection of our underwater planet."

Jean-Michel Cousteau has accepted a position on the advisory board for Oceans For Youth and is using Supplied Air Snorkeling in the Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort of Fiji. His primary goals are to educate people — especially young people — about the marine environment, and he sees Supplied Air Snorkeling as an innovative tool that can only help foster greater understanding of the marine environment. Jean-Michel wants to help Oceans For Youth find ways, in conjunction with some of his other efforts, to provide SASY experiences to underprivileged children and groups around the world.

Looking Ahead

The patent-pending SASY and SASA designs are currently being licensed to several major scuba equipment manufacturers, some of which are involved in the final stages of product testing. As these companies gear up to manufacture Supplied Air Snorkeling units with their own brand names under license agreements with Oceans For Youth, Wayne has his eye on the horizon. "This thing is still very new, and most times it’s moving ahead of us. We’re still in various stages of discussion with a few of the manufacturers. The certifying agencies are behind this and are really excited. They are considering the best ways to utilize it. So those talks are also underway."

On the user side, interest is growing quickly. A number of resorts and retailers have ordered units for their rental programs. A major company in the entertainment industry is now testing the product for a number of uses. CNN has aired coverage of the project, and other national media coverage is scheduled.

"Everyone who’s heard of the project thinks it’s a good idea," says Wayne. I know it is, and I believe we can do some good with it. Much of our future success will depend on how creative we are — and how focused we stay with the foundation. Hopefully, in a year or two from now, this simple product will make an important, positive impact on the lives of many kids. And further down the road, we hope those kids will eventually become scuba divers and grow up to be concerned about and help protect the oceans."

For More Information

For more information, contact Oceans For Youth at 877-543-7426, e-mail to oceansforyouth@spc-mag.com, or write to 5215 Crooked Road, Parkville, MO 64152.